Old idea revisited

A while back I was looking thru some of my saved links for iPhone stands – DH gave away the one from his desk and needed a new one. I was looking at this post but it was the overall photo that caught my eye more than the stands. It looked like wall art to me, so I made it as such. Original links is gone, but this idea is similar enough.

I used some 12 x 12 scrapbooking papers and some 6 x 6 pieces.  I started with double-sided sheets because I wanted to use the tutorial for making a two-colour/pattern unit, but in the end I liked them better one pattern.  But using the double-sided papers helps make the scoring and folding clearer.

1. Score in half (whatever the size of your paper) – so

at 6 inches on a 12 x 12 sheet
at 3 inches for a 6 x 6 sheet.

Fold and crease.  open up.

2. Flip over and score in fourths.

12 x 12 – at 3 inches, at 6 inches, and at 9 inches
6 x 6 – at 1 1/2 inches, at 3 inches, and at 4 1/2 inches

The pattern on the finished piece will follow these score lines – so the leaves on the paper will be seen up and down on the finished piece.

Fold  the sides in to meet in the middle.

3. Reinforce the middle fold, keeping the opening on the outside.

4. Fold the two sides in, on the diagonal, first one way

then the other, creating an X

5. This part is hard to show in still photos.  Basically you are going to rotate the piece so it is lengthwise.

and fold the V so the sides are together at the back.  Opening up the top layer on one side, push the other three layers inside.

Do the same on the other end. Not proper origami technique, but feel free to add a bit of adhesive inside to keep it all stuck together.

I think there is a video linked in the original post.  That might be more clear if you need to see the action. The point is, you will end up with the above, and when you flip it, this!

Now, I laid it all out on a spare piece of mat board, and once I liked the arrangement, I stuck the units down by running a bead of hot glue along the centre bar in the back and putting a blob in the tip and the tail.

Bet you are dying to know what it looks like….

The crisper your folds the sharper it will look! I put it in the frame, left off the glass, and it’s already hanging over the mantle.  Matched the new curtains and rug perfectly.

Off to the PO today, finally, to mail off some more baby beanies and my ATCs. Had to stay in awaiting deliveries for DH, so didn’t manage it yesterday like I hoped.  DS and his GF are due on Sunday and I STILL haven’t finished my WOYWW visits.  I suck, I know.  But I will get to them.  Promise!

The pop up cube how-to

This is a multi-step process and I hope it will be clear.  Let’s begin with an annotated template that will act as an overview of the steps. This is the BACK SIDE (inside).

1. Print and score the template as shown. It will need to be on decent but not super heavy-weight cardstock, although see my note later for a method to use thinner paper.

This is what it will look like

2.  I use two interlocked loom bands as the mechanism.  It’s not as springy as a slightly larger rubber band, maybe about  an 1 1/2, twisted into a figure 8 would be, but it works well enough and it’s what I have.

You can see where the rubber band goes.  it fits into the valley behind the mountain folds – this is the front/outside you see.

The two sides get stuck together, encasing the rubber band. Then the flaps get stuck to the flat inside.  Now you are looking at the back/inside of the cube.

 

You can cut just the hourglass section again, and reinforce it on the inside it the rubber band looks like it is tearing the cardstock. This will let you use scrapbooking paper rather than cardstock.

 

3.  Looking at the annotated template, you will stick the tabs to the triangles.

 

Be aware that at this point, the cube will do it’s best to self-destruct.

 

 

Do this in pairs – the two top

and then the two bottom

4. Collapse the sides so you have a flat piece.  You are likely to think an extra hand would be useful about now.  Do one side

then the other.  The last tab gets tucked inside and stuck.

 

Once you release the tension, the cube will pop up!

This is the paper-weight version and it pops beautifully.

Hopefully that will help.  You can print or otherwise decorate the outside before you begin, or cut squares and add them to a plain cardstock base.

Have fun with it.

Planner pages for download (A5 and US letter)

Well it has taken a while but I THINK I have finally worked it out.  There is a UK/A5 version and a US 8.5 x 11 inch version.

You can see that the real difference is in the space between – print on one side, re-load the paper, after you’ve made sure you know how it will feed thru YOUR printer, and print on the reverse.

This middle bit is the area where, once cut apart, you will be punching your holes.  and speaking of that – if you don’t have a 6-hole punch in the A5 Filofax format, but only a single hole punch (like ME!) then this guide may help.  I’ve used it for punching the hole for my planner. You can see what it looks like here.

 

The A5 version – to be printed on A4 paper, both sides, and cut in half

two daily pages, side by side

 

one weekly sheet, for specific tasks.Meant to be folded off centre along the line. Print the NOTES lines on the back. This is meant to be used for anything specific.  I mentioned exercise routine, blogging schedule, meal planning  etc. but really it can be for ANYTHING.  Or everything – if you only want to use this week-at-a-glance version, or use it with another planner, you can.

The PDF of the month tabs and important dates circles works for both and you can get that here

The  US LETTER Version – to be printed on US letter/8.5 x 11 paper, both sides, and cut in half

This is more about the size paper in your printer.  BOTH versions fit the Filofax A5 size planner, and maybe others as well.

two daily pages, side by side (US)

one weekly sheet for specific tasks. Meant to be folded off centre along the line. Print the NOTES lines on the back. (US)

Troubleshooting:

PRINT ONE SHEET TO TEST. Please, please, do NOT PRINT 100s of pages till you know they will print reasonably well on your printer.

I have no idea what your native printer margins are or how it will “read” the file.  If things don’t print right you can try a few things:

-look at the paper size in your printer dialog box.  Does it say US LETTER? if not, change it to that

-try clicking Scale to fit, if you have that option.

-make sure you are printing the right version. US letter paper is wider and shorter than A4.  Printing the US letter file on A4 paper isn’t completely unusable but printing A4 sheets on US letter paper is likely to cut things off

If you like the style of this and want other specific pages, let me know.  It’s been a real learning experience and I always enjoy that so I am probably going to be willing to have a bash at a few more pages.  And if you encounter any weird problems, do LMK o I can see if they are specific to YOU or a more global issue.

Now I still have some WOYWW visits to return and I vow to get thru them TODAY. And I’ll get back to the pop-up cube how-to maybe tomorrow – although no one who has seen it seems keen to give it a go, so I’m not going to stress about that….

{wink}

 

WOYWW 312 – and now we are SIX!

Finally it’s here! WOYWW the 6th.

I’ve got the last of my ATCs done although I am waiting on a few addresses (Pearshaped Chris and  Debbie@ Tattered Rocks from the crop, and Bridget from far away) and have a few to deliver next crop (Julia and LLJ) and three to mail this week (Voodoo Vixen, SandraDe and Felix.) Phew.

I will share the template and will probably try to explain how it works tomorrow – it’ll take a while.  Just look at all the scoring!

I am annoyed that in the smaller size I either have to use a single loom band as the mechanism (in which case the cube tries to self-destruct during the making) or use two linked bands, which means it sometimes needs a little encouragement to POP like it should.  Especially after it has been stuffed into the pocket on the ATC and take a long trip around to the other side of the world.  But hey ho.  And really, next year I am doing an EASY ONE for sure.

I did have an overall desk shot but it came up mighty blurry so I won’t bother to add it.  The other close up is of the map-fold books I’ve been a bit obsessed with over the last week. Mostly done,  but needing final bits, all except the closed one – that one is DONE done. And I have two more that are earmarked as gifts that will be sent blank for filling.

Now, I did great with visiting last week, at least early on in the day, but once I stepped away I never made it back.  I have a few return visits to complete so I’ll be starting with them this week.  I feel like I should have made more of an effort to have a festive desk, for such a big day.  But honestly the combination of the school holidays, a long overdue family day out, various appointments and scheduled events, the upcoming visit by DS and his GF this weekend, and a bunch of stuff I have probably forgotten momentarily, meant that it was all I could do to get organized to schedule a post.

But HAPPY WOYWW to ALL!  Looking forward to another year of nosy desk hopping, and of inspiration, envy and awe, in equal measures.

 

Planner bits – Life is SO daily…

I am still working out the best and easiest way to print, and how best to accommodate A4 and US letter.  I think it is near impossible for one printable to work for both.  And that is before I even consider what sort of pre-set margins people might have on their printers, if they know how to change the setting (or would want to!)  and if I create a PDF based on borderless printing and their printer doesn’t have that option, what then?

Minefield, yes?  Yes.

What I think I CAN do is add the single PDF sheet of the Month tabs and the notable dates circle markers.  Get it here.

I’ve removed the black box – I love the boldness of it, but it’s ink-intense to print and bleeds thru on thin printer paper. This is where the design is at the moment.  I’ve made the tabs a bit smaller and sized so scoring in half leaves a bit of the colourful strip on one side and a bit on the back

 

and I’ve added some blank circles so you can use them for other things.

They can be folded over, like in the above photo, or left as circles

 

Hopefully after the big WOYWW post tomorrow I’ll get the pages added for anyone who wants to use them.

Such a crazy day – honestly I haven’t stopped since I got up and I still have at least 3 -4 more hours to get in.  DS is coming home this weekend with his girlfriend and I am nowhere near ready!

 

A planner…

I have had more than a few comments asking me why I don’t make planners.  Quite a while ago I started playing with the idea, based on one of my first printables.  I’ve not gotten far, but it’s coming along.  I am hoping, now my final ATCs are mostly made, that I can finish it up.  I had hoped to be to a point to add the actual downloads today, as I will be out and about, but I’m just not there yet.  I will show you what they are going to look like

There is a DAILY PLANNER page.  I am trying to get it to the point that it prints on both sides and lines up reasonably well enough to print, flip  print, and cut to make two double-sided pages.  The issue is with the black box.  See how it bleeds thru on thin paper?

It’s a matter of flipping the header but still having it work for A4 and US letter paper both.  It may not work no matter what I do but I have a couple more ideas to try.

There is a weekly sheet that can be used for anything – meal planning, exercise routine, blogging schedule, whatever.  That page is meant to be folded and punched only on one side, like so:

The back has NOTES: lines and that could also be printed on the back of the daily pages but dang that would be a LOT of notes!

Finally there is a sheet of monthly tabs with some circles that can be added to edges to mark Birthdays, appointments, etc. so you can see them upcoming.  I would have taken a photo but I am getting a LOT of pressure to get moving and step away from the blog!

So that is where I am.  All you planner-mavens and followers or commenters who have asked me about planners, feel free to wade in during the planning the planner stage LOL!

Enjoy your day –  I will!

 

Printables, and a near-fail book

I will begin by adding some printables that I made last week, before I got sidetracked by bookmaking.

I think looking at the PDF on my monitor, the text looks fuzzy. I’ve printed them to test for myself and they are actually fine.  There are strips for a 6×4 photo (along the 6″ or 4″ edge) and the 4″ inch ones also fit a 3×4 inch photo or filler card. There are some 3″ ones too.  Just little label-maker style text strips that you might find useful. Grab them here.

Now continuing the bookmaking adventure, I did try the rectangular labels.  Not a total fail but not a total success either.  First, an annoyance.  I was quite pleased with the paper booklet that came as a gift with Crafts Beautiful. Cute patterns, mostly, double-sided and a nice weight for the map folds, not too bulky.

Then I opened it.  WTF?

Printed right on the paper!  DOH. Careful placement of the dies just barely worked

Some of the edges look a little nibbled.  The real problem is that there is a formula for doing the map fold on a rectangle.  Width – Height / 2 (width of paper across minus the height of the paper divided by 2)  and that number is where you would mark for your diagonal score lines.  But because of  the shaped edges I was struggling to get it right.  Technically that is 9 1/2 wide minus 6 high = 3 1/2 divided by 2 = 1 3/4 inches.  But every time I did it, it seemed to fold just slightly differently.  And sometimes the folds had to be adjusted so the finished unit had neat edges.

 

I found doing one side perfectly then adjusting the other so the points matched, worked best.  And making a template for the point to fold the side in to helped as well.

 

The construction is pretty much the same, although I made the covers from the biggest size (same as the pages) then the inner cardstock dividers from the next size down.  It made for an interesting book.

Go back to the previous posts here and here for more detail on the map-fold books. This post talks about folding directional papers.

I am madly folding pop-up boxes, from my better designed .svg, to finish off the handful of ATCs before Wednesday.  Bank holiday tomorrow and we may actually get out for the day, so doing laundry too.  Blech. After spending the entire day disassembling DS’s Stompa bed OMG! what a job) and filing a mountain of paperwork, and prepping an enormous amount of  meat for the BBQ (enough to last the week for sure) and to populate the new freezer, I could use a day out….

Folding the inserts (map fold book)

I’ve already explained the map fold, so this is more to save yo ruining a piece of paper yo want to use by making a wrong fold. Firstly, look at how hugely different the labels die cut can be folded.

I suppose you could make a case for both versions being useful, but the one on the right (in the bottom photo, left in the top one) is the one that offers the most useable space, I think.  That is the one I will explain.  You can make the other version by just switching the bump and point folds. I trust you can identify a bump and a point….

1. Begin by folding the piece in half, two bumps together.

then fold the other two bumps together, keeping the mountain folds on the same side

2. With the mountain fold on the inside, fold in half, matching the points.

Matching the mountain folds of the point-to-point fold, collapse the unit. You will end up with this:

 

3.  Fold in the sides, keeping the top of the fold as level as you can, leaving just a smidge of a gap in the middle

 

and fold the reverse side to match.

4.  This is the tricky reverse-the-fold bit.  

Unfold each fold, and reverse the centre fold so the bump is inside.

5. Done.

 

The trick with paper that has an actual directions, that needs to be seen right side up, is to orient the paper correctly to begin with.

 

Make sure the single point to point fold goes top to bottom

 

It only looks wrong – the flat (unscored) areas are the “pages” where the unit is stuck inside the book base.

 

I am going to add the PDF of the shaped areas, without the poem, as it is more useful and no one really expressed any interest in having the with-text version.

You can easily create the sized text blocks and print them then stick the cut out bits over the test and print again.

Have fun!  You know, I have a set of rectangular brackets as well –  I wonder….

 

{wink}

 

Construction of the Map Fold Books

This post has the potential to be excessively long.  I am going to break it up into a couple of posts to keep that from happening.  Also, I am off out very soon.

So without further ado, here is the basic construction.

1. The book base is constructed of three folded sections.  The measurements for the one I will show are

two 4 x 8 inch pieces of cardstock, scored and folded in half

one 12 x 4 inch piece, scored at 4 inches, 8 inches, and 8 1/2 to 8 3/4 inches.  This will create a fold over flap so the thickness of the book  will determine the size.  This should help:

 

2. Stack the pieces and carefully punch five evenly spaced holes thru the centre folds

and sew together with a 5-hole pamphlet stitch.  This is the image I go back to over and over again when I forget!

That is the basis for all of the books.  The inserts for THIS one begin with not a square, like normal, not a circle, like my previous variation, but with a large bracket, cut with the Spellbinders Grand Nestabilities, Grand Labels One.

To add the pages, stick one side of the folded unit to the left (or right) page.

Add adhesive to the other side – I usually don’t cover the whole face bit focus on the centre line and the straight bits on the sides

Fold over the next page, making sure the corners are lined up, and press to stick.

Ta dah!

You can close the book with a simple ribbon or cord tie, like I did the previous sample

or add a two-button wrap, or any other closure you fancy.

In the next post I will talk about folding the pages from the label – there are a few tricks to it, especially with directional paper – and share show I added the text.  I should be able to share that as a PDF so you can print and cut, rather than taking the time it took ME to set it all up.  Here’s a sneaky peek:

The file looks like this:

 

I do also have a sheet with the shapes, but blank, so you can add your own text.  The print looks like this:

and the page looks like this!

I’ll interject here that I know not everyone is going to have these big labels.  So if you want to see the printable file for a circle page or a square page, comment and let me know.  It’s a bit of effort but I think I can do it when I return if there is interest.  I may even go ahead and do What is a Girl? (also by Alan Beck) as well as I do have one of each!

 

Hungarian Map Fold Book

So the bookmaking group I am on (pretty darn nearly the only thing that ever drives me to log in to Facebook) had a challenge for a Turkish Map Fold book.  You may recall I reposted quite an old PDF of instructions that had disappeared from the net. I’ve always like this fold, and had a bit of a play with it.  The book was cute enough, but I had to make another one so I could improve the construction.  As this is going to be VERY photo intense I’ll just show you the bare bones – a three-folds pamphlet with a flap.

The Turkish map folds are stuck two together and then stuck between each section. I’ll do another post about the construction but today I want to explain the HUNGARIAN map fold, a variation on this one, and my circular variation on that.

There is a great post here with the basic fold. That is for a square piece.  And don’t be fooled by the video that may pop up – it’s for the Turkish fold, not the Hungarian one. Although to be fair it is only one additional diagonal that differentiates the two, and by sticking the units so one piece is flat, mine really ends up being more Turkish than Hungarian LOL! But orienting the text is easier with the additional diagonal, I think.

Let me show you the finished  book first.  

I would say e.e. cummings is my favourite poet and this one of my favourite poems. This is what the it looks like opened.

but without the inserts. Unlike the Turkish one from yesterday, this one has only ONE insert between each section. The inserts are heavier weight than the graph paper so two would have made the book VERY thick.

I’ll be showing you folding specifically for the placement of the text as well as folding a “diagonal” on a circle the only thing you need to know that the original linked page doesn’t cover.

1. I printed the text across the middle of pink graph paper.  

Fold the circle in half bottom to top, across the text.  Use the lines of text to make sure the fold is straight across

2. Open and fold, again with the text on the outside, in half side to side.  

Flip it over.  It should look like this:

3. Fold the diagonals by matching the fold lines.  This is the only tricky fold.

4. Fold the second diagonal by matching the top and bottom fold lines of the first diagonal

5. Collapse the piece.  It should want to collapse, if you’ve done the folds right.

Note the orientation of the text.  You want the flat area to be the text area. Once collapsed it will look like this:

6. Mark each unit at the same point – can you see the tiny dots?

then fold in the side to meet the point.

7. This sounds tricky but it isn’t.  REVERSE the folds so those triangle on the top switch to being INSIDE the unit.  Open them

and push on that middle fold to push it inward

Re-crease the folds.  It will change from the left image to the right one.

And THAT is the circular Hungarian Map Fold. These inserts are just smaller units than the cardstock ones and the fit inside perfectly.  I didn’t go to any extraordinary lengths to get the units in exact proportion, I just made sure the marking and fold-in sides were similar, and that was good enough for them to nest nicely. I did stick them only in the very centre, which I think would help accommodate slight variations

and yet they collapse fine.

 

I experimented with a number of circle sizes and they all seem to nest nicely.

It would make a nice card too, just one fold.

I think it’s just a pretty little book.  I also think the flat areas that hold the text could easily hold photos and you could add journaling or other text to the smaller folded areas by the print/cut/stick method, or hand write it if yo prefer the circles open up relatively flat.  Well, dang.  Now I have to make  a photo one too.  Argh.  Maybe I’ll photo that for a step-by step for the construction…

{sigh}

And I can do the straight Turkish fold on a circle and see if it really is the same (minus the extra diagonal) and if it matters.

Jeez.  I am so out of practice for these tutorial sorts of posts.  I’ll try to be more concise for the next one,  just need to get my groove back.

And finish those last few ATCs before Wednesday!